Integrated Regional Water Management Plan

Still No Water for the Woods

Title

Still No Water for the Woods

Abstract

As the Fairfax and Tarlock article pointed out, and as most everyone who lives in the Western United States knows, in the West, the availability of water determines the value of land.6 Given the importance of water to the value of land, it is timely today to take a look at the protections available to water on National Forest System (“NFS”) lands and to see how well the water resources on federal lands have been protected in our legal and judicial systems.

Purpose

This paper will examine the federal government's track record in protecting aquatic resources on federally reserved lands in the West,using lands administered by the Forest Service as an example.8 It will look at how the Forest Service has fared in securing instream flows on NFS lands under the implied federal reserved water rights doctrine,9 state appropriate water laws, federal land management statutes, and the Endangered Species Act.10